Sunny Saturday

The girls are early risers. Tilly wakes around 6 to 6:30. Evie depending on when she's woken through the night. Yes, still waking through the night..... Not cool Evie-Lyn. Not cool. But anyway, here's what you can do before the clocks even struck 9, on a sunny Saturday morning. 

Peanut butter cookies for the girls snack.

Swings at the school, not a soul around as it's been raining for days on end and everything is wet. But we don't care about things like that!

Because Evie dries all the wet equipment with her clothes!

A run and play through the secret garden.

Then after all of that fun, back home to dress up for a family meal, yum cha!

Yes, I know. My instagram photos are the pits, but they're insta and make for blogging ease.

Saturday Morning Dinosaur Train

And while you here maybe you would like to go have a look at this post, from one of my favourite bloggers.

'Gardening'

After a morning inside playing with toys at a friends house for fellowship, a get together every month or so with the other ladies and their kids from our BSF group, Tilly walked right out on to our balcony and started digging in the dirt. Doing her gardening she said. I think she was self soothing, much like when I picked the basil.   

Hey Pesto!

I could give you a hundred and one reasons why I love Taiwan. Today is not that day. Let me tell you instead the two things I don't like about Taiwan. 1. Cockroaches. 2. Dog Poo. And if I were being honest I would add in 3. Mould.

So today my two pet hates met each other with reckless abandon, head on. When I was walking the girls to school I made the untimely realisation that they were spraying the drains today. Which means, spraying it with some dangerous chemical to kill things like mosquito eggs, cockroaches. Whatever. (4. Mosquitos, 5. Walking through random dangerous sprays). Well, I'm assuming it's dangerous because as we walked back from dropping off Tilly I had the strange sensation that there were an odd amount of cockroaches running around on the street (something you normally wouldn't see). And even more belly up, freshly dead. I walked passed Daddy's storage to say hello and wondered outloud what was with all the cockroaches, and he reminded me that the man was out spraying today. Now, cockroaches are pretty hardy so for them to be running out and dying all over the street it must be dangerous spray. No? (6. Dead cockroaches on street). So I thought to myself, let's get the heck out of here. And ran nearly head on with a big dog poop. Right on someone's front door step. (You know, front doors are right on the street for houses on the first floor and all) I mean really......

So I ran back to my little oasis and thought how can I erase that from my morning?? And here's how I did it:

I popped out onto my front balcony and ever so slowly picked the older leaves off my beautiful basil plants. Sweet, tender and healing. Basking in the sun, forgetting all the mess of the city, holding a bowl and filling it with the sweet tender leaves. And then equally slowly I walked into the kitchen and got all the ingredients together to make this:

And hey pesto! I called my chicks to the table (and the rooster because he just happened to be here today for lunch) and we tucked in to some hearty 'slow food'. I've been waiting for those leaves to mature and the others to develop so I could cook this meal for over a week. It was soothing.

School and naps get in the way of things......

So after we drop Tilly off to school, I often take Evie to the park, as mentioned in previous post. But then that means I must promise to take Tilly to the park also. Now that we're fully into spring and heading into summer, it is inevitable that thunder storms hit in the late afternoon.

Because Tilly goes to school in the mornings and Evie needs to take a nap around noon, it's often not until it's right about ready to start raining that I have the chance to take them both out to play outside. Sometimes I can get Evie to squeeze in a morning nap and that means we can go right after school and play generally as long as we want.... which is about three hours. When you live in the city and you're a stay at home mum, the kids playing outside means you're outside too.... There is none of this, "Kids - out in the backyard please so that mummy can get things done...."

Anyway, this afternoon I decided to brave it anyway and take them to the largest park in central Taipei to play in the sandpit and swings etc and then possibly a pizza dinner from this great little pizza shop opposite the children's play area of same park. Of course not 5 minutes out the door it started to pour down raining.

We saw Daddy a few seconds before the rains came and ended up going in the car with him to the park we play at after church on Sundays, as he was going to do a couple of quotes right there. And, it wasn't raining in that part of town!! Yeah for the little things!!

And here are the girls. (Just a note, expect to see not very good instagram photos from now on as I've completely lost the will to plug the camera in at the end of my night and search and upload photos....)

Evie-lyn loves a good bellow. She's a little thing, with a big strong voice that she's not afraid of you hearing.

Tilly desperately trying to get on of us to come with her to the climbing poles she usually plays with all her mates on a Sunday afternoon. I grudgingly went as I knew Evie would be completely distracted by the cute fish pond right beside it and get herself into all kinds of danger... Tills is learning how to jump and hold on and is really quite good!

And here is the 'Schlide' as Evie calls it. This slide has been a thorn in my side many a year. I think it's really high and rather precarious, which is why the kids love it. I've let the reigns somewhat loose on Evie however and she's a complete pro at it. Her two tricky moves are the 'slide and flip' and the frontal manuovere. She rockets down at full speed. The slide and flip by the way is sitting on your bottom and flipping on to your tummy half way down.

Spring days

Now that Spring has settled I've decided I absolutely must take the girls out as much as possible. Here is Evie this morning at our favourite Xing Long Park. I love this park. It's big, clean, friendly and green. There is a great big pond with fish, ducks and turtles and bridge. A baby friendly playgroud that Evie can navigate all by herself, and does.... An older child friendly playground, lots of grass, tables and trees. Clean public toilet, rubbish bins and recyle bins (this is rare in Taipei). Old folks playing checkers. There are trees and rocks to climb on the far side that Tilly and her friends get lost in for hours. The other day they were swinging on vines. Here is Evie on said far side which is full of squirrels (this side just happens to not have the grass!). Now, I"m not sure how I feel about squirrels. A lot like how I feel about monkeys... However, they provide lots of entertainment for Evie. And there is only this many squirrels because there are that many trees. Also, squirrels on this day provided us with free bread. A well meaning lady handed me a piece of fresh bread to feed the squirrels....... (I"m not sure they need to be eating white plastic bread?)........

And here is Evie making her own decision about who the bread was actually intended for. She even sat down for it.

Such a shame I didn't capture the greeness of this place. When you look up it's just a sea of green leaves. The weather is so pretty at the moment.

Fast forward to Easter!

Somehow or other I did not prepare myself for the Easter season. Of course, we've been reading the Bible, discussing the meaning of Easter and it's wonderful significance. But really what any little kid most wants of all is to celebrate it in fun. And often the case with me, things slip by and don't get done.

So, I went from "Oh my goodness today is Good Friday - how did that happen?!" to .... "Come on girls the hot cross buns are fresh out of the oven and ready to eat!" Domestic Goddess was I today. We crafted all morning. We discussed the meaning of Easter. Our new life in Christ, His ultimate sacrifice. We made gorgeous little egg baskets, that the girls will use to collect the eggs in the morning around the house for their special Easter Egg Hunt! We made Easter headbands. We punched out dough that had risen to the skies and made the most delicious hot cross buns I have ever tasted. A first attempt. It was total Easter bliss. The girls even attended a special Easter fete with their friends!

I brought back from Australia the last visit our wonderful old Children's Bible and I've been reading to them from there. Tilly is actually waiting in anticipation for 'The resurrection!' part. (And of course the eggs.....) I love how the meaning is never lost on Tilly and how she revels in the significance of both Christmas and Easter. I tend to think she is too young to truly grasp it. Silly me. Evie still feeds to sleep (ahhhh, so over breastfeeding and really wishing she wasn't!!) but it provides the perfect opportunity to pray out loud in the darkness while the girls drift off to sleep. Tills wasn't having any drifting off today! Tonight I had lots of things on my mind about what is coming up tomorrow and so didn't pray as long as I normally would have. "Mum! Keep praying!" Hahaha, Tills. Just love that kid.

We'll be rising early to 'go' on an egg hunt, I'll be up before them making more hot cross buns for a special delivery. And then an early Easter church service and then another after that to see our dearest friends E, A & J be baptised. A special Easter indeed.

The perfect beach holiday

So many photos we don't have of all the super duper fun we had with the cousins on this holiday. Well, anyway. It was truly the perfect holiday.